Poker...Then and Now

I admit it; I’m a dinosaur when it comes to poker. If there was to be a series of, “I’ve been playing poker so long, I remember when they used to …” jokes, I could fill in a lot of the blanks. I’m often asked how poker is different today than it was 40 plus years ago (ouch!) when I started playing legally in poker rooms. This sounds like a good topic for today’s column, since most poker players today have no idea how much difference there is from the 2015 poker scene and the 1974 poker scene.

1. Smoking – When I look at pictures from, “the old days of poker,” I see players smoking at the table. It used to be brutal to get a tournament seat draw next to a smoker. At least in a cash game you could change seats or leave, but I remember how gross it was to have to breathe my opponents’ smoke for hours at a time during tournaments. I remember players bringing small, portable fans to the felt in order to blow the smoke away from them. I remember going home and having to throw my clothes in the washing machine immediately.

Here’s a trivia question for you: What was the first poker room anywhere in the world to go non-smoking? Answer: Card Player Cruises in 1999. Two years later in 2001, Bellagio and the Mirage took the bold step of banning smoking, the first two brick and mortar cardrooms to do so. Slowly, other cardrooms followed suit. Some of them were too afraid to lose their smoking clientele, so they made compromises such as not allowing the players in the one or ten seat to smoke or allowing smoking on graveyard only. It wasn’t until 2005 that most of the Stations Casinos went non-smoking. Players today take the no smoking policy for granted and would be shocked to know that only a decade or so ago, that wasn’t the case.

2. Cardroom Abuse – I have addressed this issue in other columns, so will suffice it to say that today’s cardrooms don’t allow the type of misbehavior that was rampant many years ago.

3. Women – In the ‘70s, I was often one of only a handful of women who played poker in Las Vegas. Today, there are lots of female players. It isn’t unusual to see women make up 20-35 percent of a cardroom’s client base.

4. Game Choices – When I first started playing poker in the ‘70s, draw poker was the only card game played legally in California. It wasn’t until the mid-’80s that hold’em, seven-card stud, and other poker games were legalized in California. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, five-card stud, six-card stud, Kansas City lowball, and razz were the most common games in the early ‘70s. Texas hold’em started gaining popularity in the late ‘70s. Omaha was introduced in Las Vegas in the mid-’80s.

Prior to the start of the 21st century, you couldn’t find a no-limit hold’em cash game in Las Vegas except during the World Series of Poker. With the advent of the World Poker Tour, everything changed and no-limit hold’em is now the number one most popular poker game. We also didn’t have all the “B” games: badugi, badacey, badeucy, and no one at the turn of the century had heard of Chinese poker or razzdugi.

5. Tournaments – When I moved to Las Vegas in 1980, tournaments weren’t nearly as popular as cash games. The local weekly tournaments had standard buy-ins of $22-$55. It was rare to find a buy-in larger than $110 except during WSOP time. Gradually, casinos started having tournament series where we could play in buy-ins as high as $200-$300. There was only one $10,000 buy-in event per year, the WSOP main event.

Of course things are different today. You can find high-roller events with buy-ins of $25,000 or more and $10,000 buy-in events are common place.

6. Tournament Structures – Deepstack events are a modern concept. We used to get very small starting stacks, and there was no such thing as starting with 10,000 or more tournament chips. There were no multiple day one starts. Limits often doubled every level, rather than increasing gradually.

7. Tournament Payouts – When I finished in fifth place in my first WSOP event in 1980, I didn’t cash. They only paid three places regardless of how many entrants there were. My how things have changed. I love that they are paying 1,000 places in the WSOP main event this year!

8. Poker Training Tools – When I first started playing poker, there were only a few books to teach you the ropes…no poker magazines, no online poker, no chat forums, no vlogs, no boot camps, and so on. I just discovered Twitch – who knows what amazing technological advances will occur in the poker world in the next 10 years?

9. Poker Tours – There were no “poker tours” when I first started playing poker. There weren’t many professional players in fact, and everyone knew everyone. There was no World Poker Tour, European Poker Tour, Latin American Poker Tour, Heartland Poker Tour, Ladies International Poker Tour, Senior Poker Tour, Mid-States Poker Tour, and the list goes on. The WSOP had a monopoly.

10. Miscellaneous Changes – In the ‘70s, there were no automatic shufflers, no televised poker, no poker cruises. The poker vocabulary was limited; no one talked about VPIP, triple-barreling, smallball poker, bum hunting, and the like. Satellites and sit n’gos hadn’t yet been invented. There was no Tournament Directors Association and no standard rules for tournaments. There were no penalties in poker.

Nevertheless, I loved poker in 1974 and I still love it today! ♠

Linda Johnson is a member of the Poker Hall of Fame and the Women in Poker Hall of Fame. She is co-owner of Card Player Cruises and hosts corporate events, seminars, and tournaments. She can be reached through her website cardplayercruises.com.